UrBC, Yekaterinburg, January 29, 2018. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development (UBRD) won the Global Banking and Finance Review magazine’s award for Mobile App of The Year in 2017. In fact, the bank also proved Eastern Europe’s No.1 online banking service in 2015, the bank’s press service reports.

‘UBRD’s mobile app has been out there since 2015 and has evolved significantly since the time of the launch, with new functions and theme settings. Now our customers can use their smartphones to pay their housing and Internet bills, pay their traffic fines and taxes, make card-to-card transfers, open new bank accounts, and apply for credit cards,’ the press service says.

The number of UBRD mobile app users grew by as much as 30% in 2017.

‘We are delighted to see our bank’s tech solutions acknowledged on an international scale. More importantly, however, we did manage to offer our customers a more convenient app that gets used increasingly more often. The online banking and mobile app market competition is growing ever more fierce, as digital channel users demand increasingly more in terms of e-products quality and customer service. Our customers tend to migrate to our mobile services, there are more and more people out there willing to get their financial services right there and then. This is why we are getting our bank ready for big changes. The plan is to switch to a new tech platform that will allow customers to add, personalize, and adjust all the mobile app options as soon as they need it,’ says UBRD E-Business Director Vadim Belopolsky.